Alain De Botton

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1,037 appearances 5 recordings 5 series first heard Jan 2024 last heard 1 Jul

Alain De Botton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Conversations · Special Collection: Alain de Botton on the true hardwork of love and relationships · 22 May 2026 podcast

This is not people on a first date.

The heroine of my novel is a classic person who

psychologist called avoidant.

An avoidant person, when emotion gets too difficult, they just go cold.

They go and read a book and they say, I don't need you.

When they need you a lot, they actually paradoxically start saying, I don't need you.

And these people are... Well, it's normally about 50% of the population.

Those people are really hard to read because on the surface, they're telling you something like, I'm a bit busy this weekend.

I don't want to see you.

But the real meaning of that is, I'm worried you don't want me.

And so...

And love needs, in order to succeed, the imagination and tolerance of Tolstoy or Jesus because that's really what it takes to love someone.

You need to go behind the often rather repulsive surface behavior.

You need to go around that to see the kind of frightened, wounded person.

you know but basically often quite nice person that's behind the surface and i think that's what that's what fiction at its best does you know when you go with dostoevsky and he introduces you to a you know a murderer or prostitute or whatever but then says look you know there's more to it than this and goes you goes around the back and you you know you start to feel sympathy that is the work of love you know we're trying to define what love was for me that is what love is love is an attempt

Sorry, I'm going on a million tangents.

But think of Jesus' idea, the Christian idea.

I speak to you as a secular Jew.

Jesus' idea that a true love means that you could love anybody.

And we're so nowadays focused on the idea of finding the right person to love.

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